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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

German industrial automation company Festo has come up with a bionic gripper, OctopusGripper. The company's focus areas include pneumatic, servo-pneumatic and electric automation technology and the Octopus Gripper is certainly drawing attention in the tech press.

The name is quite apt. The gripper has been modeled on an octopus tentacle. Its advantage lies in its ability to grip softly but securely. What is more, the OctopusGripper can pick up and hold a variety of different shapes. A video shows it taking canister-shaped objects, a ball, plastic water bottle and glass successfully.

[...] Well, not to be confused with the real creature with its water-based muscle, this is a Festo design where, as Samantha Cole in Motherboard explained, "compressed air bends the robot tentacle and controls its pliability. A combination of passive and vacuum-powered suction cups provides grip."

The soft silicone structure is pneumatically controlled. With compressed air applied, the tentacle bends inwards and wraps around an item. The team followed the natural model to come up with their design: two rows of suction cups are on the inside of the tentacle—small suction cups and larger suction cups.

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